Editor’s note: A judge approved the plea deal in this case on Monday, July 15 and set a sentencing date for Sept. 9.
For five days, friends and family frantically searched for a Snow College student who had left her dorm and seemingly disappeared into the night.
Her parents pleaded for help. The case drew national attention to the sleepy Sanpete County town, with news stations across the country replaying the last footage captured of her as she walked out the door carrying a plastic grocery bag. Her strawberry-blond ponytail behind her back was the last image anyone had.
Police initially said they didn’t have much to go on, but they were able to ping her phone, which had last sent a signal from 90 miles away from Ephraim in the even tinier Utah town of Loa. And it was there, after going door to door, that officers found the 19-year-old student alive. She was tied up in a basement and covered in coal dust.
The man who had allegedly kidnapped the student in December 2021 was charged with six felonies including rape and aggravated assault. Brent Neil Brown, 42, was scheduled to stand trial for those on Monday.
But now — just days ahead of that and after more than two years of trying to get the charges dismissed — Brown has signaled that he will take a deal to plead no contest to three reduced charges in the high-profile case, effectively bringing it to a quiet end.
He signed a statement this week maintaining his innocence but accepting a prison sentence in what is known as an Alford plea.
In exchange, prosecutors have agreed to drop the felony counts of aggravated assault, rape and object rape. And they have downgraded the other charges to now: one count for forcible sex abuse (a third-degree felony), one count for kidnapping (a second-degree felony) and one count for obstructing justice (a second-degree felony).
All of those will be reduced on his record by another degree if Brown completes his probation. And they can be reduced a second time — making them all misdemeanors — if he petitions for that after serving his sentence.
Brown is set to accept that agreement Monday before a judge, who has the final say in approving it. If that happens, a formal sentencing will be scheduled for later this year.
Kevin Daniels, one of the prosecutors on the case and the Sanpete County attorney, said it “was the deal that the victim wanted.”
The student had been on the witness list for the trial and did not want to publicly relive the events in the courtroom, said Daniels, who has been working closely with the family over the past two years.
“This was a very, very victim-driven case,” Daniels said. “And we are guaranteed a conviction” with this deal.
The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not name sexual assault victims. Although the student’s name was released during the search, she has asked not to be identified in ongoing coverage.
Daniels said at the sentencing that he intends to argue that Brown serve the prison terms for each of the charges consecutively (meaning back to back, instead of concurrently). Based on the counts, that means he could be in prison anywhere from two to 35 years.
Brown’s attorneys, meanwhile, told The Tribune they planned to file an appeal after accepting the plea deal. Court records show that they were prepared to argue that the student had been consensually kidnapped as part of a sexual roleplay and that police improperly arrested Brown and intentionally suppressed information to make their case.
Prosecutors have challenged that. On Tuesday, Michael Winn, also a prosecutor on the case and the Wayne County attorney, said: “This was a hard case. There are certain facts that obviously the public didn’t know. ... It was very much sensationalized” by the defense.
A representative of Brown’s family declined to make a statement ahead of the sentencing.
Student goes missing
The defense and prosecution tell similar stories about what happened in this case, but the sides differ vastly in their conclusions.
Brown had connected with the Snow College student in an online group chat, according to a probable cause statement from police, and arranged to pick her up from her dorm in Ephraim on Dec. 13, 2021 — the last time she was reported being seen.
He then drove her to his parents’ house in Loa, the statement said.
The woman’s roommates reported the student missing after she didn’t return the next day. Local, state and federal law enforcement officers became involved in the widespread search for the missing teen.
Meanwhile, Brown allegedly became violent with her both in his car and after they got to the house, according to court documents. He allegedly took the student’s phone, allowing her time to text her family only once on the morning of Dec. 14, records state.
The probable cause statement alleges he tied up the student while he was at work, threw her phone away when he discovered police were searching for her and threatened to injure or kill her family if she tried to leave.
After police tracked her phone to Loa, they searched the small central Utah town of about 500 people. At a house on Main Street, police saw a person matching the student’s description in the window of a basement, the charging documents state.
Brown answered the door and told police he was alone in the house, according to the documents. Police later searched the home and found the student’s ID sitting out, along with a gun.
They then found the woman in the basement, covered in coal, the documents state. She told officers she had been told to hide there. She said she was held against her will and assaulted multiple times, after withdrawing her consent.
Allegations, search history and consent
But the defense paints a different picture of Brown’s motivations.
In court documents, Brown’s attorneys say the 19-year-old willingly left her college dorm that night and waited on a curb for Brown to pick her up. The pair had met online and planned to engage in “master/slave/kidnap roleplay,” which the student had been “fixated on” for months, defense attorneys wrote in a motion to suppress evidence.
In the weeks prior to meeting Brown, defense attorneys alleged that the 19-year-old had a “vast and unusual internet search and browsing history,” including searches for “How to get yourself kidnapped” and “why do i want to be kidnapped.” The student had also posted online “asking to be kidnapped,” according to the defense.
The defense attempted to cast doubt on the dramatic rescue scene — the discovery of the woman tied up in a coal bin.
In their interpretation, she chose to remain “concealed for several minutes after officers first entered the basement” and didn’t respond when officers called out for her. She was “not gagged, tied, or otherwise restrained,” which defense attorneys argued “weighs strongly in favor of knowledge, intent and consent” from the woman.
The defense says that Brown and the student “had agreed on the limits of the acts they would engage in and how a party could withdraw her consent during the roleplay.”
In that motion, defense attorneys argued that none of what officers collected from the Loa house should have been admitted during the trial. They say police overstepped in their search and then tried to make the evidence fit a narrative that favored the student and left out any information about the roleplay.
Prosecutors, in a responding motion, disagreed with the defense’s claims that officers erred in the search and Brown’s arrest. They did not acknowledge claims they intentionally omitted or misrepresented facts.
Judge Marvin D. Bagley dismissed most of the defense’s motions at a hearing earlier this month. Brown’s defense said they plan to appeal based on motions that the trial court denied.
Meanwhile, Daniels, the prosecutor, said the plea deal offered to Brown had not changed since the case began — meaning the defense’s planned arguments were not a factor in offering the deal.
Winn, co-counsel, added: “We [were] ready and able to counter any of those arguments” based on the legal requirements for consent.
Consent in one interaction, for instance, is not blanket consent for all future acts; consent can be withdrawn at any time during an encounter. He said the plea deal “reflects a fair resolution of the actual, underlying facts.”
“I know this plea reflects the reality,” Winn said.
In the plea deal, Brown does not admit guilt, but with the reduced charges he pleads no contest to restraining the student, touching her on the chest without her consent and making false statements to officers.
Such a plea, according to the document in this case, allows courts to imprison someone who is “unwilling expressly to admit his guilt but who, faced with grim alternatives, is willing to waive his trial and accept the sentence.”